A point-of-presence (POP) center is a small-scale data center with network equipment and proxy servers. A POP center acts as an end-point for a client device's TCP connection requests. A POP center establishes and holds a connection with a client device while the POP center retrieves at least a portion of the user-requested content from a data center.
A fast connection to a POP center usually translates into a good (or fast) “site speed” of a web site that is supported by the POP center. Typically, the closer a client device is to a POP center, the faster the connection to that POP center. Thus, if a web site owner desires to increase his/her site speed, the web site owner should add POP centers that are close to the web site's users. However, the relationship between geographic distance from a POP center and connection speed is more complicated. Multiple factors other than geographic distance may affect connection speed, making the decision where to add POP centers more difficult.
Furthermore, even though a POP center is less expensive than a full-scale data center, adding a single POP center is still relatively expensive. Thus, simply adding POP centers in areas that one would think would benefit from a POP center is not the best option for resource-constrained web site owners.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.